“This — eh...” Rebbe hurries forward. “This is Yankele.”
“Is that his name?” Perel says. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Well, eh,” Rebbe says. “Yes.”
No.
“Yankele.”
That’s not my name.
Rebbe says, “He’s an orphan.”
“An orphan.”
“Yes. I was — David came across him wandering in the forest, you see, and, and, it seems he can’t speak.” Rebbe pauses. “I’m afraid he’s simpleminded.”
I am not.
“A simpleminded orphan,” Perel says.
“Yes, and I thought it can’t be safe for him, wandering alone like that.”
Perel stares up at her immense head. “Yes, I can see he’d be vulnerable to attack.”
“Well, at least I thought it would be inhospitable to abandon him. I have to set an example for the community.”
“So you locked him in the shed.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Rebbe says. “It was late.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this right, Yudl. David Ganz, who leaves the house of study so infrequently that his mother has to bring him fresh socks, happened to be out in the forest at night, alone, and he happened to come across a simpleminded mute giant wandering, alone, and he happened to bring him here to you, and you decided to have him spend the night outside, in the courtyard, in a shed.”
A pause.
“I suppose that’s more or less the size of it, yes.”
“If he’s mute,” Perel says, “how do you know his name?”
“Well... that’s what I’ve been calling him. But I suppose it could be something else—”
It is.
“How do you know he’s an orphan?”
Another pause.
“Did you make this cloak?” Rebbe says. “What a marvelous piece of work. Yankele, look at you, you’re a regular gentleman.”
“Don’t change the subject, please,” Perel says.
“Darling. I was going to tell you as soon as I got home. I was held up, I had to adjudicate a case, extremely complex, you see—”
Perel waves a shapely hand. “Never mind. It’s all right.”
“It is?”
“But he can’t stay in the shed. To begin with, that’s my space. I need it. More important, it’s not right. It’s worse than inhospitable. It’s inhuman. I wouldn’t put a dog in there. Would you put a person there?”
“But, you see, Perel—”
“Yudl. Listen to me. To my words. Carefully. Would you put a human being in the shed?”
“... no.”
“Of course not. Be sensible, Yudl. People will ask questions. Who lives in a shed? Nobody. Especially nobody that size. They’ll say, ‘That’s no man, living there. Who lives in a shed?’” She clucks her tongue. “Besides, it’s shameful. ‘This is where the Rebbe puts his guests?’ I won’t allow it. He can have Bezalel’s room.”
“Eh. Do you really think that’s the best place for — wouldn’t it be better, I mean to say, if he were to — Yankele, I apologize that I’m speaking about you like you’re not here.”
That’s not my name.
“He can help around the house,” Perel says.
“I’m not sure he has the... the intelligence.”
I do.
“He does. You can see it in his eyes. You understand me, don’t you, Yankele?”
She nods.
“See? That was the light of comprehension, Yudl. I could use the extra hands. Do me a favor, Yankele,” Perel says, pointing to the well in the corner of the courtyard. “Draw water.”
“Perele...”
While they continue to argue about where to house her, and what to tell people, she lumbers dumbly to the well. The rapture of being able to move is dulled by the knowledge that she isn’t moving of her own volition. Draw water.
“It’s not that it’s a bad story,” Perel is saying.
Draw water: she pulls up the rope, takes the sloshing bucket in hand.
“It’s just that you’re a bad liar, Yudl.”
Tips it out on the ground.
Wait a minute. Wait. That’s not what she meant.
Draw water: her body begins lowering the bucket again.
“Truth shall sprout from the earth,” Rebbe declares.
“And righteousness shall be reflected from the heavens,” Perel replies. “Wonderful. Until then, let me do the talking, please.”
The second bucket she also dumps out.
Fool. That’s not what she meant.
But her body keeps going, heedless of the howling objections of her mind; it has one directive — draw water — and it fulfills it with perfect obedience, bucket after bucket, and each time she bends to lower the rope, the reflection that greets her repels her. It is a face like the knot of an oak tree — lumpy and lopsided, furred unevenly like lichen; a huge, cruel, stupid face, devoid of emotion. Is this how she is to exist? She would rather drown herself in the well. She cannot choose to do that any more than she can choose to stop, and she raises the bucket and pours it out and raises the bucket and pours it out until Perel yelps: the courtyard has flooded, ankle-deep.
“Yankele, stop!” Rebbe shouts.
She stops. She cannot understand why she has done something so plainly absurd, and she burns with hatred for her own idiocy.
“You have to be very careful how you phrase things,” Rebbe says.
“Apparently,” Perel says. Then she bursts into helpless laughter.
Rebbe smiles. “It’s all right, Yankele. It’s only water. It’ll dry.”
She appreciates their attempts to console her.
But that’s not her name. She has a name.
She cannot remember what it is.
Chapter thirty-four
The café was near the Charles Bridge. Jacob breakfasted with hungover backpackers on tasteless coffee and oily pastry, sizing up each of the waitresses against the archetypal Creeper victim — wispy, vulnerable — and waiting for a lull in service to flag down a petite, delicately featured redhead.
“Klaudia?” he said.
She pointed to the outdoor tables, attended by a homely brunette he’d ruled out right off the bat.
Big-shot detective. He reseated himself, smiling as the brunette brought him a new menu.
“Klaudia,” he said.
She reacted to his use of her name. “Prosím?”
“English?” he asked.
She showed him the translated menu options.
“You, I mean. Do you speak English?”
She pinched her fingers together to show how little.
“Can I talk to you? Can you sit down for a second?” He opened his badge. “I’m a policeman. Policie? Americký?”
She said, “Moment, please.”
She left and came back with a manager in tow.
“Sir, there is a problem?”
“Not at all. I was hoping to talk to Klaudia.”
Klaudia’s face slackened, and she craned up to whisper into the manager’s ear. His mouth corkscrewed in annoyance. He flashed Jacob a hand. “Five minutes.”
He directed them to the back of the kitchen, and they stood on watery rubber mats, conducting a largely one-way conversation, her responses limited to sign language and head movements. Engulfed in clouds of dishwasher humidity, she seemed dissociative, threatening to liquefy before his eyes — a not uncommon response to sexual trauma. He felt bad badgering her; he admired that she was putting on a good show; he wanted nothing more than to let her go, so she could run home to hide, rechecking the locks ten times before balling up under the covers.
Could she remember that night? (Yes.) Was it okay to talk about it? (Yes, okay.) She’d seen the man’s face? (Yes.) Was she sure it was the same man the lieutenant had shown her in the hospital? (Yes.) Did she see what had caused the man to let her go? (No.) Did she hit him? Elbow him? Kick him? (Yes, yes, yes.) Was she aware of the presence of another person? (... no.) Had she heard anything, seen anything, while she was running away? (No.)